Getting rid of blank pages created by double sided scanning of physical bundles containing double- and single-sided documents
Electronic bundles created by scanning a physical bundle with double- & single-sided documents tend to have a high proportion of blank pages because the person doing the copying generally finds it easier to scan the whole bundle double sided.
The blank pages increase the file size and make working on the bundles very annoying.
Currently the only option is manually removing the blank pages, one at a time and although it solves the problem in the long run it is an immensely irritating chore itself.
Adobe support on Twitter thought they had a fix using the 'Page is empty' function in Preflight but it doesn't work because a scanned blank page is not detected as empty. It would be really useful to have a fix that could detect scanned blank pages as well as coping with the occasional small mark such as a hole punch hole or a scanner glass scratch/smear.
At the moment with remote working as a barrister I'm getting typically about 10% of blank pages routinely and up to almost 50% from time to time in 200 to 1,000 pages of a brief or set of instructions.
I can't send an example because all those I have contain legally sensitive material, I'm afraid.
A feature that identifies these blank pages and facilitates their removal would be immensely helpful.
There would need to be a 3-step 'Identify. Review. Remove.' approach because there will be some pages that have almost nothing on deliberately and it would be dangerous if one simply hit a button to "Remove all blank pages". That would be too blunt a tool.
There would definitely be a demand for such a tool in my field as the courts in England & Wales have gone on to double sided bundles as of the 6th April - https://www.civillitigationbrief.com/2019/04/02/the-rules-they-are-a-changing-new-rules-on-bundles-from-the-6th-april-2019/. Adobe support on Twitter suggested I put the idea to you.
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devFromest commented
You can try my "Noora PDF" software project. It has AI inside, and I trained it on some scanned pages with punch holes. Maybe this will work for you: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/PDF/Zautin-Simple-PDF-Watermark.shtml
It is free, but you can Donate.